It is known to drive commercial piles into the ground, these being piles constructed of steel cylinders or solid concrete and having diameters of about 3 to 16 inches. Such piles are normally driven by a dynamic impact of a dead weight or drive hammer applied at the top of the pile. A problem with the prior art pile drivers using dead weights is that these are very heavy weights and they are slow to be retracted along the boom to an upper position whereby to be released onto the top end of the pile with sufficient force to drive the pile into the ground. Such rigs create very large vibrations in the ground and can affect the foundations of adjacent building structures. They can often damage the top end of the pile although an impact block is usually supported on top of the pile but the weight is often not equally distributed about the pile. Such apparatuses are also very noisy.
Another disadvantage of the above pile driving rigs using dead weights is that cranes are required to lift these weights and these cranes are fairly large and are not easily maneuverable, particularly in tight spaces and form this reason these rigs cannot be used when there is insufficient access to a space in which piles are to be drive. These pile driving rigs are very dangerous as the dead weights usually weigh in the area of 7,000 pounds. A disadvantage of such rigs is that there is often cable breakage or breakage of the guide slide of the boom due to the dropping forces created by these heavy impacting dead weights.
A still further disadvantage is that the piles need to have a diameter of at least 7 inches to resist to these high impact blows and therefore such rigs are not utilized for driving smaller diameter piles for supporting foundations of houses or buildings as the blows of these dead weights would break the piles.